by J M Fraser
He wrapped his arms around her. “We all have bad days. Wait for tomorrow.”
“But what will I do tomorrow?”
* * *
They sat at a table in the middle of Henry’s kitchen. Every time Gabriella looked up, his disapproving expression sent her scurrying for cover. She told most of her tale to the steam rising from her mug of hot chocolate.
Fire roared in the hearth on her left, but her column of smoke had positioned itself in the way, diminishing her view in that direction to glowing shadows. A few blackened pots hung from pegs on the opposite wall, a sink with a water pump stood against the third, and an old wooden cutting table rested at the fourth. Henry could browbeat her all he wanted. He had his own set of issues. Rather than let go of Sarah, he still lived centuries in the past.
On the positive side, the wise man did keep a crucifix on the wall above the cutting table. And she’d seen him kneel before it for morning prayers. Despite his magnificent gifts, Henry knew who was mortal and who was God.
Too late for her to follow that example. Having finished her story about miracle workers and bombs and failed suggestions to insane kings, Gabriella dared look into Henry’s scolding eyes. “Can you blame me for what I did?”
“Let me get this straight. You took it upon yourself to change history by trying to kill the most influential figure in two thousand years—someone I happen to believe was the Son of God—and you don’t think you should be blamed for it?”
“You had to be there, Henry. In Hiroshima.”
“You better hope God doesn’t take this personally.”
“He shouldn’t. I was interpreting His will.”
The mop-haired, self-righteous, scowling curmudgeon spread his arms and looked heavenward. “Did you hear that? She didn’t think you’d mind!”
“Go ahead. Twist the knife.” What had she been thinking? Why hadn’t she talked to someone like Henry before heading to Judea? The signs she’d read in Japan had been ambiguous at best. Fury must have clouded her judgment, even though she’d imagined herself calm when she met with Herod. She’d been as crazy as the king!
Henry lowered his arms and stared into her soul again, sending her running for cover, back to the warm steam of her drink. “I know you have a moral code, Gabriella, warped though it may be. You must have had a guiding hand at some point.”
“Not really. I figured things out on my own.”
“Heaven help us.”
“I did hear voices when I was very young, but they weren’t useful.”
“What did they say?”
“No, no, no, no, no, no, NO!”
Henry burst into guffaws. “You should have listened.”
“Do you enjoy making fun of me?” She stole a sip of her burnt drink. The old fool had tried roasting a pot of hot chocolate over the flames of his hearth instead of doing something modern such as conjuring a stove with controllable burners. Nevertheless, she didn’t complain, and she didn’t use her magic to improve the flavor. Henry had hugged her. She’d respect his ways. She’d even endure a scolding.
“I’m thinking there’s a reason you shape yourself in the image of a child,” he said.
“I like the look.”
“You angels live forever. Maybe your emotional adolescence lasts thousands of years.”
“Maybe you should be more respectful of an angel.”
Henry scowled. “Try acting like one. Do any of your little friends have a user’s manual for metaphysics? You might want to bone up on the topic next time you get a notion in your head to mess with history.”
He had her there, on two counts. She’d love to get her hands on such a book, and, “I don’t have any little friends.”
“How do you know? Would you recognize another angel if you saw one?”
Probably not. Nor was she good at pegging messiahs. Her thoughts strayed to the image of a human shadow burned into a marble bench. She shuddered.
“Perhaps your brethren are shunning you,” he said.
“Careful. I might not be done crying yet.”
Henry took up his mug, sipped, grimaced, and set it back down. The browbeater wasn’t perfect. He couldn’t even make a good cup of hot chocolate.
Gabriella stifled a smile.
“Here’s a lesson,” he said. “A small change to the past won’t have any more effect than dropping a stone into the ocean.”
Or a pebble into a pond. “Are you quoting your elusive book of metaphysics?”
He rubbed his hands together. “We’d make a pretty penny selling one, wouldn’t we?”
“You have no answers, do you?”
“I know of a theory.”
“Yours?”
“I’ve heard it bandied about.”
“Do share.”
“The past already happened. You can’t change it.”
“Thanks for the news flash,” she said.
He leaned forward and eyeballed her, glanced at the smoke, then back again. “Wait, there’s more. The theory goes like this. You can’t change the past, but if you create a big enough wave in it, a new version will spring alive in another dimension.”
She blinked.
He nodded.
By telling a mere secret, had she duplicated the world, along with all two hundred fifty million of its inhabitants at the time? She’d have set them on a new course while leaving the original universe intact. One civilization for her and one for God.
Hers might be the better one! She’d spend so much time with this combination of dollhouse and chessboard, guiding mortals away from the violence in their souls.
And yet, all she’d seen while in Manhattan had been… Manhattan. “How would we know if I created a new world?”
“There’s talk of portals.” Henry directed his attention to the smoke again. “Did you have that thing on your heels before your little trip to Judea?”
The pebble of insight nearly flattened her. She couldn’t find her voice.
“Step through it and see what you find,” he said.
Gabriella pushed her chair back and turned to the possible doorway of a magical new dimension. But playing God might be heavy work, relentless. When would she rest? And mightn’t a dimension without Christ’s own influence be a dark place—even worse than the one she’d tried to fix?
Suppose her role was to trudge across this other earth now like Diogenes, searching for an honest man to replace the son of man. How many centuries might that take?
“I need to think about this. Thanks for the hot chocolate. And the hug.”
“Come any time.” Henry spread his hands. “Mi casa es su casa.”
“What if I never step through the smoke. Will it go away eventually?”
The spark of humor returned to his eyes. “Ah, the ostrich approach.”
“Mocking me. Always mocking me.” She headed toward the door, with the gray curtain nipping at her heels. “I just might dropkick this thing back into the Hudson River and walk away.”
“It’s all the same to me,” Henry said. “I can control my curiosity.”
Ha ha. Gabriella had a notion to fashion the smoke into a club and beat him with it. And yet, he did hug her. “Do we have each other’s back, Henry?”
“Are you asking whether I’ll fish you out of there when you get stuck inside?”
“I can control my curiosity, thank you very much.”
She left the castle.
* * *
Back in Manhattan
At the banks of the Hudson River, Gabriella turned to her unwanted pet. “Scoot! I don’t want you.”
The smoke’s waterfall-murmur grew as loud as thunder.
“Go,” she said.
Nothing happened.
“I’m not stepping through you.”
Still nothing.
“I’m not.”
The smoke had all day.
She lasted nearly an hour before curiosity overcame her.
* * *
And on the other side? Sanctimonia
:
Forty days before harvest moon, 3346 (still August 6, 1945, in our world)
Gabriella staggered out of a small log cabin located within a meadow surrounded by thick forest. A summer breeze warmed her face, but dusk would soon settle, judging by the position of the sun. She hesitated, considered bolting, and glanced back. The portal of smoke, this ridiculous doorway from one place to the other, hadn’t abandoned her. She could leave whenever she wanted.
She moved away from the cabin then, in slow, measured steps. Ten paces. Twenty. She stopped again, looked back at the portal, blessedly unwavering, then resumed. Thirty. The grass softened her footfalls like a plush rug. Thirty-five.
“Umphhh.”
An invisible barrier with the elastic texture of a balloon bent inward but refused to let her through. She tried to walk around but bumped into it again. And again. Gabriella headed in the opposite direction, back to the portal and beyond. Ten paces, twenty, thirty, thirty-five. Again she hit a barrier. A swarm of butterflies teased her by flying right through it, but when she pushed, the wall held fast.
She returned to the portal and tried another direction but couldn’t break free. She came back, tried another, failed again. More butterflies danced back and forth, unimpeded by the invisible wall. The wind scattered leaves through the barrier. A chipmunk scampered from one side to the other.
Enough. She headed back to the portal. If God wanted to be the only creator, why hadn’t he just told her so? A simple no would have been far clearer than His ridiculous signs.
“Ho!” A man’s voice came at her from the trees to the south. His green outfit blended so well with the forest, she didn’t see him until he stepped into the meadow. He carried a crossbow in his right hand and looked as though he’d leapt from the pages of Robin Hood. “Exspectata ut Sanctimonia,” he said.
Welcome to Sanctimonia.
Gabriella hadn’t heard Latin spoken outside a church or rectory in fifteen hundred years.
CHAPTER 4
The village of Aricia in western Virtus
Twenty-one days after harvest moon, 3414 (September 30, 2013, in our world)
Quintus trotted across a stretch of cobblestone marking the entrance to a dusty village. Several yards ahead, a golden-haired beauty in peasant dress hurried onto the road and threw an armful of palm leaves in his path. He reared his horse, nearly pitching himself off the saddle to avoid running her down.
His friend and escort, Bertramus, along with their small company of soldiers came up from behind with a clamor of hoofs on stone and shouts of “Whoa,” “Steady, girl.”
The beauty, a maiden of perhaps nineteen, offered a shy smile. She shaded her eyes against the sun. “Welcome, sire.”
“Sire?” What manner of foolishness was this?
The pretty young woman held her ground in his path like a siren luring her prey to an exquisite death. She offered no explanation for littering the road or addressing him as king.
Quintus averted his gaze from her ample bosom and focused his attention on her face. He had as much desire for women as any man, but he’d lately decided to deny himself a pleasure that always proved fleeting at best. Love and honor the woman first, do her right by marrying her, and then enjoy the fruits. A laughable motto in this savage land, but one he believed would bring greater happiness in the long run.
He kept that bit of wisdom to himself. Why open himself to ridicule by others, such as the men accompanying him who had already started chuckling over something? He ignored them and addressed the woman. “Your offering almost killed me. And for what? You can’t possibly think me a king.”
She bowed her head. “Oh, yes, I do, King Albus.”
The soldiers’ chuckles exploded into laughter.
Of course. The men had ridden through this village earlier on the way to retrieve him from his post. They must have spread the false news among the local populace. Quintus turned to their lieutenant, Bertramus.
The red-bearded scoundrel winked and laughed.
The woman reddened. An unintended victim of the prank, she now seemed ready to burst into tears.
Quintus dismounted and draped an arm over her shoulders. He summoned as regal a tone as he could invent. “You’ve honored me greatly, dear lady. Ignore these laughing fools. They’re jesters in training.”
She glanced up at them, then back down at the road. “Jesters in…?”
“Training. For a performance in the capital.” He led her away from the chuckling fools. “Enough about them. Let’s talk about you.”
“About me, sire?” She spoke to the cobblestone at her feet.
“Tell me your name.”
“Livilla,” she whispered.
Quintus lifted her chin with a finger. “Livilla, your blue eyes remind me of the great saint Gabriella. And your golden hair is ever more beautiful than hers. You’ve heard of Gabriella, yes?”
Livilla beamed. “The saint of the woods? Yes, sire, but Gabriella is a myth. No one in these lands has ever set eyes on the girl.”
“Oh, she’s real, all right. One must travel to Sanctimonia to find her, for she never leaves her cabin grounds. But why would anyone hazard such a journey when the proud village of Aricia boasts a woman as special as you?”
Livilla graced him with a smile.
Quintus helped her gather the palms from the road.
* * *
Twenty-eight years earlier, in Peace Memorial Park, Hiroshima, in our world
August 6, 1985
For the fortieth time in as many years, Gabriella planted a vibrant yellow flower at the approximate point where a circular gateway once hosted a swarm of butterflies. The memory of Asura’s demise brought fresh tears to her eyes.
A crew of groundskeepers lurked nearby. They’d pounce when they found the tulip in their azalea patch, just as others had done each previous year—rooting the flower out and bringing a fresh stab of pain to an angel’s heart. This emotional ritual of birth and death surely served as suitable penance for Gabriella’s misguided message to Herod, but did God even notice? His voice remained silent.
She trudged from the garden to the cenotaph, a white monument resembling a horseshoe standing on its legs. As always, she focused on the spot where Asura’s name should have been carved with the others, but the child’s death had gone unnoticed by the sculptors.
Not for the first time, hope stirred her heart. Perhaps the girl who knew all the secrets had survived the blast. Maybe she’d been an angel disguised as a human. But if so, why hadn’t Gabriella sensed the girl’s nature? And why had Asura never returned?
Oh, to block the fruitless meanderings of a lonely mind! Other victims had been left off the official record as well, their hopes, dreams, loves, and conquests vaporized into nothingness, just like Asura—a forgotten miracle worker who’d left only a burnt shadow on a marble bench.
Gabriella turned to the skeletal remains of the Industrial Promotion Hall in the near distance. The cylindrical portion of the crumbling stone complex remained intact, but the beautiful green dome it originally supported had melted in the blast. Only a metal frame remained to hint at the structure’s former grandeur.
How to reconcile the majesty of man’s architecture with the destruction caused by his darkest weapons? She’d once thought religion had been the principal cause of violence. Now she knew better. She’d inadvertently duplicated the universe when she whispered to the mad king, cloning a copy of earth without Christianity. Within that alternate world, the brutal fiefdom of Virtus now thrived. A land with a long history of mayhem and bloodshed, and religion had nothing to do with that.
Gabriella glanced over her shoulder at a curtain of smoke still following her after so many years. She’d rendered it invisible to avoid embarrassing questions by onlookers, but she still knew what lurked where others saw only shadow—not just a portal to another dimension but a constant reminder of the hard lesson she’d learned. Wars, murders, rape, and treachery had all been on the increase in both dimensions sin
ce 1945. If anything, the world needed more messiahs, not fewer.
Hiroshima day. She’d had enough of her annual pilgrimage. She found an elderly man dozing on a nearby bench and escaped into his dream.
“I’ve seen you before,” he said.
“I visit on this date every year.”
“But for such a young girl to come without her parents, always alone…”
The word bit hard enough to bring more tears. An all-too-brief friendship with Asura had eased the ache of loneliness for a while. After that, solitude. She turned away to hide her face.
“Crying won’t shame you,” the man said.
She fled to a woman’s dream in Tokyo and then to a boy’s in Hong Kong. She leapt from there into Europe, dashed across the ocean, bounced through New York, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, and finally emerged from the World of Mortal Dreams into a region of northeast Texas where the hilly Ozarks fade into thinning forest.
On the other side of the portal lay a different place despite its perfect correlation with these geographic coordinates in the southern U.S. During one of her earliest forays through the smoke, she’d matched the two areas by studying the stars, but the solution to that little mystery only led to more questions. Why had God opened a gateway to one particular location—Sanctimonia, a peaceful wooded region bordered by the hostile and violent fiefdom of Virtus? Did a messiah live in the immediate area? Thus far, her search for one had proven fruitless.
Yet she still couldn’t shake the notion a savior in Sanctimonia might be a step in God’s grand plan. The original world remained deeply troubled despite once having been blessed by the birth of Christ. Perhaps a second, newer messiah would emerge in Sanctimonia, travel to Virtus, where he’d show the barbarians the light, and then march across the portal of smoke to try saving God’s original children again.
Hence the butterflies dancing in Asura’s garden just before the atomic bomb exploded.
Surely God had given a sign to her in 1945 Hiroshima. To believe otherwise would be to admit she’d committed perhaps the most heinous act of defiance against Him since Adam and Eve bit the apple.
